bloodlust
by winnie-ing
Summary: In the aftermath of a tragedy, Lisbon joins Jane on his revenge-driven hunt for Red John. AU.
1. Chapter 1

bloodlust

In the aftermath of a tragedy, Lisbon joins Jane on his revenge-driven hunt for Red John.

I have taken some artistic liberties in the settings and the plot. This is definitely an AU and has the potential to be OOC, but I will try my hardest to keep these characters as, well, true to character as I possibly can, given the plot I have chosen. I hope you enjoy reading this and please feel free to give constructive criticism/feedback, as I'm new to this whole fan fiction scene and need some help.

I obviously do not own The Mentalist but rather only wish I did.

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

one:

It was seven-thirty on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning when she received the phone call that made her heart stop beating.

'_I'm sorry Teresa, but Tommy and Annie were found dead this morning'_

Not even bothering to change out of the tank top and shorts she had slept in, Lisbon jumped in her car and sped away from her apartment.

She had never driven so quickly to a crime scene in all of her years as a cop.

The flashing blue lights and yellow crime scene tape already decorated the outside of Tommy's small cottage home by the time Lisbon has screeched her SUV to a halt in the driveway. Trembling, she exited her car still clad in the tank top and shorts she had worn to sleep last night, rushing to the front door and absentmindedly flashing her badge to the rookie guarding the threshold.

She rips the unassuming white note off of the cracked open door and reads it quickly.

'_Agent Lisbon: If you share his side, you share his pain.'_

Tears now streaming rapidly down her face, she pushes the door open more forcefully than she intended, making it hit the wall behind it with a bang.

She sees the leering red smiley face before she is pulled into a warm body by the arms of a certain blond-haired consultant, using his arms as a brace when her knees give out in agony. Jane gently steers her away from the crime scene before she can see the mangled, bloody bodies of her brother and niece strewn across the floor.

She can feel her heart crack in two as she comes to terms with what has happened.

She doesn't think she's ever sobbed this hard. Not when her mother died. Not when her father became a drunk and hit her brothers. Not when her he later committed suicide. Never.

Muffled by Jane's vest, she hears the soft voices of her team ask questions and feels, rather than hears Jane reply back to them in the saddest tone she's ever heard from him.

She just sobbed harder.

The light had gone out of her life.

xxxx

Nobody thought twice about the fact that Lisbon didn't bother showing up to work or checking up with the CBI the first two weeks after Tommy and Annie were slaughtered. Neither did they fret over the absence of her consultant, who had stopped by the CBI a couple hours after he took Lisbon home to pick up a few changes of clothes from his attic and hasn't returned since.

The newest Red John murder had hit home hard for both of them.

But after a month of radio silence from both Lisbon and Jane, rumors of the duo quitting the CBI and running away together swirled around the office, fueled by the knowledge of shared pain and hidden feelings of love and understanding that may have surfaced amidst the tragedy. Nothing was confirmed, however, and Lisbon's team still patiently watched the doorway to the office day-by-day in hopes of seeing the face of their beloved boss.

A month and a half later, when neither Jane nor Lisbon bothered to show face at the CBI or answer any phone calls, Bertram officially marked them as absent without leave. After all, it wasn't like Lisbon to wallow in self-pity for longer than necessary nor was it like Jane to let her live like that. Cho, Rigsby and Van Pelt were promptly sent to check up on Lisbon and her apartment

The ride to Lisbon's in the black SUV was silent.

Pulling into the building's driveway, nothing seemed amiss. However, despite both Jane and Lisbon's cars being in the parking lot behind Lisbon's apartment complex, the knocks on the door were met with complete silence. After a moment of contemplation, the team opened Lisbon's unlocked front door, and were shocked to see the scene inside.

Absolutely nothing was amiss, although not in a comforting way. Everything was spotless, scented lightly with lemon and bleach as if someone had meticulously scrubbed every surface of the apartment. There was not a speck of dust gracing any surface, nor a streak on any window. The living room had been vacuumed, and new magazines graced the polished wood of the coffee table. A quick scrounge of the cabinets showed sparkling clean dishes and silverware and not the cupboards and refrigerators had been cleared of all food. The place had been cleared out.

Curious, and with mounting anxiety, the team moved further into the apartment. Lisbon's bathroom sparkled and fluffy towels hung neatly on hooks and bars, almost as if it were a hotel room bath waiting for an overnight guest. Even a fresh roll of toilet paper hung beside the shining porcelain toilet. Moving even farther into the apartment, the team makes their way to Lisbon's bedroom.

This room is probably the most hauntingly clean of them all. Shirts and suits are hung neatly in the closet, jeans are folded neatly on shelves, and rows of leather boots and tennis shoes are polished and lined up neatly in a row. The curtains have been ironed and the bed linens have been washed and the bed is made up to a hotel's standard. On the dusted night stand lays both Jane and Lisbon's phones, with their data cleared and memory wiped clean, as if they had something to hide. But eeriest of all, a small white slip of paper lies beneath the phones.

The team feels a cold shiver go down their spines as Cho reads it aloud.

"_It will all be over soon."_

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

A/N- So there is the first chapter. No worries, the next chapter will start right after the time of the murder and will be focused mostly on Jane and Lisbon and what has happened in the month and a half between the murders and when they disappeared. I am going to flip back and forth between Jane and Lisbon's story and the story of Lisbon's team trying to find them, so the audience gets a full view of what is going on. I really hope you enjoyed this and would love to hear feedback!

-Winnie


	2. Chapter 2

bloodlust

I apologize for the delay. I still own nothing.

**xxxxxx**

That first week, she hated him.

She hated him with every cell in her body. She hated him for all he was, all he wasn't, and for everything else in between.

For what it was worth, he hated himself too.

She oscillated between sleeping, crying, and screaming at Jane. She'd toss and turn as she tried to manage even a light sleep, awake on a bloodcurdling scream, and then cry out her misery to anyone or anything that would hear her.

Her heartbreaking routine anguished Jane as he laid upon her couch, staring up at the ceiling until he heard her quiet and he would try to catch a moment's rest.

He now knew better than to comfort her in the state she was in. The first time he heard her cries, he had tried to pull her into her arms, only to have her snap at him and blame him for and his "foolish, reckless, _stupid_" feud with Red John for all of the light and happiness leaving her life permanently without a forewarning. She blamed him for making her love him- a phrase that made Jane's stutter momentarily inside of his chest- and then having her family, _the last of what she's got!, _killed for nothing but a lost cause.

It was painful for her to see him, and it was too painful for him to see her hate him so vehemently.

They chose not to see each other at all that first week.

xxxxxx

She came out of her room for the first time sometime in the beginning of the second week, carrying an empty water glass that he had tried to keep full when she fell asleep. Her tank top hung loosely off of her skin-and-bones frame, her eyes were red rimmed and sunken in, and Jane's heart cracked at the sight of his firecracker Lisbon looking so damned _broken. _

She didn't say anything, didn't acknowledge his presence. Just refilled her glass and swept soundlessly back into her room without so much as a peep.

He never heard her sob again.

After that first outing, she came out of her room frequently. She took a shower, her first since the tragedy. She'd flip on the television and stare at it blankly, clearly not seeing or hearing a word, for hours on end from the couch kitty corner to the one that Jane almost never moved from. Every now and then, Jane would glance over at her only to see quite tears stream down her face constantly, rapidly, leading Jane to believe that she wasn't as numb to the grief as he had originally thought.

She still didn't speak to him for nearly a week after that, and when she finally did, it was nothing more than short, choppy sentences that came out of her mouth.

"_What's for dinner?" "The team okay?"_

They ate meals together in near silence across from each other on Lisbon's tiny dining room table, with her more or less pushing her food around with her fork rather than actually eating it.

He understood.

He remembered being in her shoes some ten or so years ago.

xxxxxx

The first time she _really _spoke to him after the murder, she apologized.

"_I'm really sorry for what I've said to you these past few days. I don't really mean it."_

Her bottom lip quivered helplessly and he couldn't help himself from pulling her into arms. She clung to him tightly, desperate as if he were her last tie to the physical world.

"_No, no, you don't have to apologize, you have lost a niece and a nephew. You could curse the whole world and it would still be justified." _

She squeezed his torso tightly.

"_I lost a son, Jane."_

His heart breaking, he pulled her down with him onto the bigger of the two couches.

"_It's not your fault, its mine. Oh, Teresa, I'm so sorry. I am so incredibly sorry."_

And then they were both crying.

They clung to each other desperately on the couch for hours. Jane whispered never-ending apologies into her ear and she forgave him more times than either of them could possibly count. After a while, they dozed off between sniffles.

Even on the cramped and tiny couch, it was the best sleep that either of them had had in the past few weeks.

xxxxxx

They were lying quietly on the couch together the next morning when she made the decision that started their hunt and altered the paths of their lives forever.

"Jane, I'm going to kill him."

He looked down at her blearily, blinking the sleep out of his eyes and trying desperately to not fall back into the heaviness of sleep.

"What?"

"I'm going to kill Red John."

Part of him was thrilled that she was finally seeing things his way. Another larger part of him was shocked and weary about how quickly all of her morals and everything she stood for had flown out the window so abruptly.

"We'll catch him Teresa, I promise. We'll catch him and he'll rot in a prison cell, just like he deserves."

"Honestly, I'd rather him rot in hell."

The sincerity in her eyes should have shocked him. It didn't.

"Alright."

"So you'll help me? This _is_ what you've wanted from the beginning anyways…"

"If in a week, after you've thought over all of this, you still feel the same, I will help you. I just don't want you to do anything that you will ultimately regret."

"I won't regret this. You'll see."

That's when she started cleaning.

She hopped off of the couch and went to work on the kitchen.

xxxxxx

At first, he had honestly no clue as to what she was doing. The way she meticulously cleaned every surface of the house, even the most miniscule and obscure, meticulously had him legitimately puzzled, something he hadn't felt in a very long time. In the beginning, he had assumed that this deep cleaning was a sort of coping mechanism to deal with the grief of what had happened and the anxiety of what was to come. He assumed that the repetitive cleaning strokes and the intense focus helped to clear her mind and alleviate her pain. And with the way she had obsessively cleaned for three days straight, is conclusion truly wasn't impossible.

"Jane, forget a week. I can't wait any longer to kill that bastard. Let's start now, because the longer we wait, the longer he lives."

"Do you want to return to the CBI? Are you ready to head back to work?"

"Fuck the CBI, Jane. It's been over a decade, and they haven't managed to get any closer to him, and I want him gone. _Now. _Let's just make a clean break and take out the bastard on our own. We can move faster than the law ever could."

He still wasn't quite used to the way her views on law and justice had changed so drastically in her grief and anger. Never would he have ever thought he would see his Saint Teresa take the path of revenge, the same road he had been travelling for the past decade. In a way, he felt relieved to have someone to walk that lonely road with. However, he wasn't happy with the circumstances that brought someone to that path. Especially when that someone was the most loyal and just person he had ever met.

"Are you absolutely sure?" Cerulean eyes met tired, yet determined green ones.

"I am."

And that's how their story of revenge began.

xxxxxx

He now understood the true reason for her cleaning spree.

"_I want out, I don't want to stay here anymore, I need a clean break"_

She wanted to leave this place, even leave Sacramento and find this bastard. She had cleaned every speck of dust from before the murder, washing away the memories she had of before her life had ripped apart at the seams.

It was her way of accepting what had happened and moving on from it, and he had nothing but the purest form of respect for the woman that, even in the aftermath of a tragedy, was still so much stronger than he could ever hope to be.

After she had deemed the house spotless to her standards, she began to pack.

She tossed in nothing more than her bare necessities: undergarments, socks, a few pairs of jeans, a couple tee shirts, a light jacket, and a coat in case they weren't finished by winter. In an afterthought, she tossed in her favorite jersey to sleep in. Anything else she could possibly need could be picked up along their way. Of course, in their own bag, she brought all of the weapons she could possibly need and her badge in case she needed to pretend she was still with the law.

Jane had followed suit and packed up all of the clothes he had brought to her house.

It still befuddled his mind that they were about to embark on the journey that lead to the destination of either Red John's end, or their own. It still puzzled him even more that _Lisbon _was the one who was going to be right there beside him, _helping him_, as they finished the final chapter in the saga that was Red John.

He wondered what would happen in the final moments. Would she shoot Red John? Would he? Would Red John kill them both? If they did kill Red John, would they be arrested? Would the CBI be there?

All that he knew was that those questions would be answered soon enough, if Lisbon had her way.

It would all be over soon.

**xxxxxx**

A/N- God, I'm so sorry that this took so long. Being in college is hard, and I'm only a freshman… God help me with the rest of my math degree

-w


End file.
